Came The Light

reeling from failure
hiding in shame
feeling dejected and small
try as you might
deeper and deeper you'd fall

Running in circles and pulling your hair
clinging to any relief
in your final despair
somehow you came to believe

then came the light
and carried you through the night
telling your heart it's alright
leading you on
making you strong
inside

then one day a storm
brought you weakness and fear
with nowhere to run or to hide
but quiet and still
that voice whispered deep inside

time marches on
the light grows to the dawn
though darkness will often bring doubt
in ever-increasing amazement remember the hour

About the Song

For many people, perhaps most, coming to faith is a slow awakening, like
sleeping in on a Saturday morning as the sun gradually pulls one to waking as it
streams little by little into the window. For me, however, it was--to follow the
metaphor--an explosion. Most of the people who read this will find it hard
to believe that I am describing events that involved myself, for I changed
drastically on that day, and I would continue to change much in the years that
would follow. And I do not easily speak of these things unless
specially prompted to do so by circumstance or conviction. But someone
recently suggested I should make this stuff known (and Jeremiah was right).
Therefore, I do so now.

It was my eighteenth birthday--July 23, 1984. I had flunked and dropped out of high
school and could not get a job. Plus, I had a drug and alcohol problem
along with other issues. In short, my life was a major mess and at major
risk. I celebrated this birthday with LSD--the powerful hallucinogenic
popular in the sixties. By this time, I had done the drug perhaps a
hundred times, but this time was different. It was not the usual paranoia
or self-consciousness that often plagued me; something was really going wrong.
As I slipped further and further into uncontrollable panic, I realized it was
just "a bad trip," but there was nothing I could do to stop it or relax.
And I was outside in the streets of Pasadena alone. I knocked on doors
hoping to get help; no one opened. I tried to call the police from a
payphone to turn
myself in; I could not communicate with the operator effectively. Then I
slipped fully into the awful hell of a psychotic break running heedlessly
through the congested traffic of Southern California streets.

Yet all this time, a remarkable process was occurring in my thinking.
When I had awoken that morning I was, at best, an agnostic with respect to God,
and, at worst, a pagan with deep occultist beliefs and practices. But as
this horrible state of mind descended upon me, I feared that the Devil (who I
did not believe in) was deliberately trying to destroy me (though I was aware
that my thinking was highly distorted, I had little power to change it through
mere willpower). I realized first that I had no one to blame but myself.
I had ingested the drug and was responsible for my decisions. This led to
the notion that perhaps sin was not just an abstract concept advanced by
theologians to make people feel guilty, but a very personal and real principle.
And if sin was real, then so was judgment and, therefore, God (also whom I did
not believe in). And if God was real, perhaps I could appeal to him to
save me from this nightmare. Then I knew he had no reason to do so.
Sin had warped me so that I was an offense to him. Then I remembered the
claim of the street preachers and Jesus freaks: God had sent his son to pay for
my sin. For once it did not seem so silly.

My heart ascended and descended a roller coaster of hope and despair, and
even this thought had a problem: somehow I realized that receiving Jesus' offer
of payment meant surrendering myself to him completely. This was not
anything I had ever heard; it just came to me intuitively--if he had bought
something, then the thing was his. And I believed it and
could not go through with the exercise; something in me resisted this with
horrible tenaciousness and first had to be broken. But the horror deepened
within me.
The earth heaved and swayed beneath me and the sky darkened and swirled above me, and I
knew that I was at the decision point. Soon I would be dead--somehow I
knew it.

In anguish I reached for the lifeline at the last available second. In
a dirty alleyway behind a water-treatment plant, I fell to my knees and through
tears said the most difficult words I can ever recall speaking: "Jesus, please
forgive me. Please come into my heart. Please help me." Suddenly I had a
very real sense of a luminous and virtuous entity descending out of the sky at
light speed and filling my being--I would later describe the sensation as
"taking a shower on the inside." Whether it was a hallucination
or not, the sensation was overwhelming and
brought such sudden peace, in marked contrast to such awful stress, that I
fainted and lay in the dirt.

I don't know if I was out for seconds or minutes, but when I came to, the
drugs played out their part. I was again plunged into the "bad trip"
(a.k.a., psychotic break) in which I ran into
trees, walls, moving cars, and living-room windows. My memory once
included every detail of the trauma for months afterward (LSD is not an
anesthetic or even a
pain-reliever), but it soon dimmed, and all I can now recall was the taste of my
own blood and wrangling with monsters that were choking me. In reality, a
half-dozen policemen were merciful enough to do the hard work of restraining me
rather than kill me on the spot (I later read their report to my great shame). And who would have blamed them?

Hours later I came to. I was hand-cuffed in a bed as a doctor pulled
glass out of my head after shaving half my hair off. My clothes had been
soaked in blood to the point that they were destroyed, and I had been dressed in
a hospital gown. I found that I had at one point been given a 50% chance
of survival. At this point, I had two prominent thoughts. One made
sense: You really blew it this time! The other was foreign to my
thinking and made none whatsoever: Everything is going to be alright.
The first, while true, eventually faded. The other has only increased through the years
and is a focal point of this song.

After a few days in the hospital and a couple more in the Los Angeles County
Jail, I appeared before a judge on my arraignment. I was still clothed
only in a jumpsuit without even shoes. My head was half shaved and my hair
matted with dried blood, and my arm was full of stitches from someone's window
glass. But on the inside I was clean--in a way that can only be
comprehended by those that have known the joy of being "born again." Looking back, I now see that
never was I more beautiful than on the day I was most wretched.

The judge released me on my recognizance (no bail required) provided that I
submit to treatment. I recall humorously arguing with the hospital staff
as they tried to convince me that I had a problem (denial is a river in Egypt).
They eventually prevailed, and I entered the inpatient program but did not apply
myself as I should have. Two weeks into my residency, my roommate escaped,
got caught and returned. The next morning he told me he brought a joint
back in with him and asked if I wanted to share it. Incredibly, I said
yes. I had three hours of fun and three days of pure hell as I realized
what I had done and the potential consequences--after all I had already gone
through! Finally, I could not bear the guilt and came clean. Then,
being truly humbled by my addiction, I went to work on the twelve steps in
earnest. I include this incident to answer a question I am often posed:
"Are you sure you were really an addict? After all, perhaps you just dabbled in
drugs and alcohol but were never truly addicted." This incident shows that
I had, if nothing else, the insanity that accompanies this sickness.
Fortunately, that was the last time I would ever ingest a mind-altering
substance. Eventually, I came to view alcohol the way a diabetic views sugar: it
is OK for you, but for me it is poison.

To make a very long story very short, I was the
seventh to enter and, four months later, I was the first to graduate the
program. One day during my first days back at home a friend, Arch, was at
the house with me. He told me, "If you open the Bible at random, the first
scripture you see will have meaning for you that day." I was too young and
naive to know that God doesn't work that way, so I tried it. In perhaps
the most stunning miracle I have experienced, I opened to Isaiah 52:11:

"See, I have taken out of your hand
the cup that made you stagger;
from that cup, the goblet of my wrath,
you will never drink again."

I soon got a job waiting tables and returned to school and earned my high
school diploma. I paid restitution and stayed sober. A year later the same
judge told me, "You are one in a million," and dropped all charges and
probation. Though I rejoice, I wish that
were not true. It has now been fully twenty-four years since I have used a
mind-altering substance (that includes alcohol), and I could not be happier to
say so. I eventually went on to discover that I enjoy math and science and
earned my bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering through which I am now
employed with Caterpillar (at least, until they read this and find out what I
used to be like!).

What actually happened on that day? Old friends have suggested that I
merely had a powerful hallucination with religious overtones. Perhaps.
But I enjoy asking them to explain how the drugs ceased and yet the
hallucination continues. And if this is a hallucination, I should gladly
choose it over the "reality" I had before succumbing to it. After all,
that quiet, still voice has sustained me through some very dark tunnels in a way
that drugs could not.
However, I truly believe in it. At the very least, I must conclude that I
hallucinated my way to a very real salvation. Honestly, my conviction grows with each
passing year that there is only one way to interpret the events on July 23, 1984: God revealed himself to me, not because of
the drugs but in spite of them; I accepted his
gracious offer in his son; and he took up residence within me by his Spirit.
While I must acknowledge the role that some wonderful people played in my
recovery, as well as that of the twelve steps and other resources, looking back,
I see one overriding principle connecting and harmonizing them all together and
working through them for my good: The Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, to whom I
surrendered myself that day.

I am far from perfect (ask anyone who knows me--the better they know me, the
worse the report will be), but I am forever changed. This song is a way of telling him thanks. I
have written the lyrics to apply vaguely to my situation while focusing on the
real, underlying issues, which are
a theme common in many believers' experiences: Often our greatest trial contains
the seeds of our greatest triumph. But there is often a breaking, as there was
for the apostle Paul, to whom Jesus said, "It is hard for you to kick against
the goads."

About the Music

I recall trying to learn Phil Keaggy's Fare Thee Well--a challenging
piece in a very alternate tuning (E-G#-D-F#-B-E) with the capo on the third fret.
I had put the song down and was fiddling with the guitar in this state as I
stumbled on the notes for the chorus
and realized I had found something special (I later discovered it cannot be
played in standard tuning). I knew immediately it was somehow about The
Light, but it would take nearly three years to narrow it down much further.
I struggled with the lyrics for a long time before understanding that the song
is about my salvation experience. But even then I had trouble writing
lyrics that connected adequately because the material is simply so intimate.
Deep down I think it was difficult to be this honest. But the song could
not survive with anything less. Of course, I recall that I once told The
Lord that I would never hesitate to tell this story given the opportunity.
The music presented the opportunity to tell it through WillSongs.

About the Instrumentation

Not being content to let an out-of-tune guitar be the only odd thing about
this song, I pursued instrumentation that really made it a departure.

The first addition was a djembe. And not
just any djembe. This one had to be a fully produced sample kit! Back in
March, 2007, Rob Weber, Ken Broy, and I recorded samples of Ken's playing with
the intent that we would assemble the raw recordings into a SoundFont sample
kit. However, after sitting on the recordings for nine months, I purchased
Battery 3
to improve my drum sound. So, as a learning tutorial, I built a simple kit from our
recordings. Finally, while writing Came The Light, I realized that the djembe was just what the song needed, so I put real blood, sweat, and tears into
the kit and made it part of the song. I now refer to the kit
affectionately as "Ken in a
box." (Send a
note if you are interested in licensing the sample kit.) Here are notes on
the kit's development:

Besides the djembe, I knew I wanted bass. But not just any bass.
Of course, I needed a bass I neither have nor play--a fretless upright (I have
held them before but could not get beyond where the fifth fret was supposed to
be). But, having been a bass player, I have long believed that there should be a law
against sequencing the bass, and if a bass player does so, there should be a
declaration of war by Congress! So, of course, I proceeded to
sequence the bass. Perhaps this, more
than any other token, indicates that I am no longer a "bass player"
(since I won't file my fingernails--I need them to be an acoustic guitarist). But,
being unable to completely leave the thing in mothballs, I used the
Fender Jazz Bass Plus V to write
and generate the solo during the bridge. I wanted the line to be realistic
and driven by my instincts as a bassist. To do this, I recorded the real
bass, converted pitch to MIDI data,
edited the data to convert slides into pitch
bends (to simulate sliding without frets), and drove the sampler with the
results.

Finally, I needed a synth. I thought about strings, but strings are
dangerous territory for me. Fellow musicians tend to hear how inauthentic
sampled strings tend to be, so even my best attempts only create a distraction
from the music's message. But as I thought further, I concluded that
strings weren't really what I wanted anyway. I wanted an analog
synthesizer. But, not having one, I turned to
Analog Factory which
digitally models seven classic synthesizers and offers literally thousands of
patches. I waded through hundreds of patch types called "pads" and
narrowed it down to one. After I had settled on the final patch, an irony
occurred to me, and I wrote, "It just 'dawned' on me: the song is about The
Light brightening 'to the full light of dawn.' I just realized I chose a patch
named 'Rising Sun' from a library of thousands!" Analog Factory offers real-time
control of selected parameters, two of which
are manipulated in the fade-out at the end to give the song some motion.

In the end, the song is like nothing I have ever written, recorded, or even
conceived. Following The Muse can take one to some interesting places.

Enjoy,
Will

Jennie

17-Oct-2012

Besides my grandmother, I
remember only one other person that reached out to me with the love of Jesus
Christ during my turbulent adolescence: Jennie. I was fourteen when we met in the local
theater where kids drank and watched rock & roll movies, and we both liked
Tommy and Quadrophenia by The Who. Jennie had a great voice,
and I enjoyed backing her up on my guitar as she sang. Jennie later came to
accept Christ, and she urged me to do so also. Something she saw inside me
prompted her to say, "I know you would make such a great Christian." Her
words sank deep into my soul, but I did not yet believe, and we went separate
ways. After my catastrophe I wanted to thank her, but I did not get the
chance. Then I moved away. Years later I would think of her from
time to time. She appeared in my dreams occasionally. In one, she
wept for joy as I introduced her to my family and she saw the good things God
has done for me. I still wanted to thank her for her kindness and concern,
without which I may not have survived the ordeal described above, but I thought
there would always be time.

I was wrong. Through the magic of Facebook, I learned last week that
Jennie died on May 31, 2012, after a long battle with a brain tumor. This
is as close as I will come this side of Heaven.

Thank you so much, Jennie.

Jesus said, "I am the light of the world. Whoever follows
me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life."
John 8:12

Even in darkness light dawns for the upright.
Ps 112:4

The path of the righteous is like the first gleam of dawn,
shining ever brighter till the full light of day.
Pr 4:18

For God, who said, "Let light shine out of darkness," made
his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory
of God in the face of Christ. 2 Cor 4:6